Career
Shipley also competed in three Summer Olympics, earning his best finish of fifth in the K-1 event in Sydney in 2000. With Mechanical Engineering degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology, Bachelors 2001, Masters 2002, he retired from full-time competition for a job with S2O Design and Engineering, in Boulder, Colorado. In that job, he assisted Gary Lacy (the engineer of record) in the design of the $37 million United States. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, which opened in 2006.
In a redesign of the man-made whitewater park concept, Shipley is patenting Rapidblocs—plastic structures that can be moved to create different rapids.
Rapidblocs are utilized in the London Olympic Whitewater Park, whose rapids his company, S2o, designed. The Rapidblocs allow the park to adjust their rapids to appeal to a wider audience than the Olympic Kayakers that will utilize them in the games.
